A History Lesson at the Times

Far be it from us to kick the New York Times when it’s down. But along with the issues of corruption, plagiarism, fabrication and bias, the Times has serious problems with simple competence. This item from yesterday’s Corrections section is illustrative:
“A sports article on Sunday about the history of Roland Garros, the tennis stadium where the French Open is played, misstated the year in which the Germans began using it as a prison camp for Jews. It was 1940, not 1939.”
Not so long ago, pretty much anyone would have known that World War II started in the fall of 1939 with the German invasion of Poland, and that Germany followed up in May of 1940 by invading France. Even the French were not so feeble as to allow the Germans to use their stadia as prison camps a year before they were invaded.
Presumably editors at the Times read this stuff before they publish it. Maybe it’s a sign of the decline of civilization; maybe just a sign of the decline of the Times.